The Mysterious Men in Black and Their Equally Weird Cars

For years – or perhaps even for centuries – the Men in Black have been elusive, fear-inducing figures who hover with disturbing regularity upon the enigmatic fringes of the UFO subject. They nurture and weave their very own unique brand of terror and intimidation. Like true specters from the outer edge, the MIB appear from the murky darkness, and roam the countryside provoking paranoia and fear in their notorious wake, before returning to that same shrouded realm from which they originally oozed. Very often traveling in groups of three, this definitive trinity of evil seemingly appears and disappears at will. They are very often seen driving 1950s-style black Cadillac’s. Particularly strange is the fact that most of the witnesses say that the cars of the Men in Black vanish almost impossibly quickly. It’s almost as if the vehicles of the MIB are beamed aboard UFOs. Maybe, that’s not too far from the truth. As bizarre as it might sound, there are a number of reports on record of black cars (A) entering and exiting UFOs late at night; and (B) of apparent aliens exiting UFOs and getting in cars. Yep, I know: it’s really weird. Back in 2009, longtime Ufologist Tim Beckley shared just such a story with me. Tim said: “I remember one incident where I was lecturing and a gentleman – a professor at the college where I was lecturing – came up to me  and told this story about how he was driving outside of a town in Michigan. It was rather late at night,  and he saw these lights in the woods. He pulled over, and there was no other traffic coming in either direction, but there was already another car parked at the edge of the road.”

Tim continued: “He described seeing some sort of ship in the distance – a UFO. A group of human-like aliens got out of the UFO, walked to the car – which was a Cadillac, or something like that. He watched them and could see they looked human. They just got in the car and drove off. But then, a couple of weeks later, he sees one of the same guys in a supermarket. These reports sound farfetched, but there’s so many of them of what seem to be aliens being able to move among us.” Moving on, there’s the very odd tale of a man named Michael Wilcox. On the night of March 6, 1961, Wilcox had an encounter of the creepy car kind. At the time, Wilcox was living in South Miami, Florida. His home backed onto an eight-acre tomato field. At around 10:15 P.M., Wilcox saw to his amazement, through the window of his living-room, a huge object hanging low in the night sky. He described it as looking “like a Navy blimp.” He added that, “…but it was larger than any blimp I had ever seen.” Wilcox raced outside and watched with amazement as a large doorway on the craft slowly began to open. When the doorway was open to its fullest, three small, circular objects exited the craft and shot away into the darkness. But, that was only the start of things. Matters were about to get really strange.

According to Wilcox, one-by-one three black-colored Ford Galaxie cars were lowered from the UFO to the ground by “a hydraulic”-like elevator. Yes, you did read that right! When the three cars were safely on the ground, a rectangular-shaped object exited the UFO and landed in the field, adjacent to the cars. Then, something amazing happened, as Wilcox noted: Four groups of four people walked out of that same rectangular-shaped craft “and entered each car.” Wilcox looked on dumbfounded, as the cars – one after another – raced out of the field and onto the nearby road! He quickly lost sight of them as they hit South Miami’s 136th Street. The amazing encounter was over. There’s absolutely no doubt at all that cases like the ones I have detailed above are not just controversial but way beyond controversial. Nevertheless, such accounts – of mysterious cars, of MIB, and of vanishing vehicles abound. Here’s one example and here’s another. Given that I’ve written four books on the MIB and one on the Women in Black, maybe my next book should be titled Cars in Black…

Ufologist Josef Hynek, who died in 1986, was provided with the details of a fantastically-strange MIB encounter that occurred in a small Minnesota town in late 1975, and that falls firmly into just such a category. Ironically, no UFO was seen on this particular occasion, but the chief witness was harassed by the driver of a large, black Cadillac on a particular stretch of highway, and who nearly forced the man into an adjacent ditch. The irate man quickly righted his vehicle and headed off in hot-pursuit, only to see the black Cadillac…lift into the air and, quite literally, disappear in the blink of any eye. See what I mean about the parallels between the world of Hollywood and the domain of real-world time-travel? UFO expert, Jenny Randles, who penned an excellent book on the M.I.B., The Truth Behind Men in Black, investigated a very similar affair that took place in the U.K. in the summer of 1981. In this specific situation, the witness, a man named Jim Wilson, had encountered something odd – but not too amazing –in the night sky, and was, unfortunately, visited by two Men in Black. They were, of course, the pale, skinny, sickly-looking M.I.B. that terrified Albert Bender way back in the 1950s. The two men told Wilson – in stern and creepy fashion – that all he had seen in the skies above was a Soviet satellite orbiting the Earth. And, that he had better keep his mouth firmly shut. The whole thing would have come to an end, except for one thing: the M.I.B. wouldn’t leave. Night after night they would carefully position their Car in Black – a Jaguar car of 1960s-era vintage – and stare intently toward Wilson’s home and with mad-dog eyes. Wilson’s anxiety levels began to rise. No surprise there. When things got too much Wilson called the local police.  

After seeing the vehicle positioned outside Wilson’s car several times, and then managing to get a good look at his license plate – that the police were quickly able to confirm as being totally bogus – they carefully closed in, with the intention of speaking with the pair of MIB and finding out the nature of their game. Unfortunately, they never got the chance to do so. As two uniformed officers approached the vehicle and prepared to knock on one of the windows, the black Jaguar melted away into nothingness. There was, not surprisingly, a deep reluctance on the part of the officers to prepare any kind of written report alluding to such an event in the station log-book. Just like the Men in Black themselves, even their vehicles are seemingly able to perform disappearing acts of a near-ghost-like nature. Now, I’ll share with you the eerie story of Tracie Austin – like me a Brit who moved to the United States in the early 2000s. I’ve known Tracie since 1996 and I have no doubt at all when it comes to her credibility. Her amazing story reads like this:  

“I remember when me and you went to the UFO Magazine conference in September 1999, in Leeds [England]. I got the train there, you drove there, and then you drove me home, afterwards. Well, it wasn’t long after that that this thing happened. I had moved up to Cheshire the week after I got back from the conference. While we were at the conference I had met Brigitte Barclay [a well-known alien abductee in the U.K.]. That was the first time I had met Brigitte. We just got talking and she happened to tell me of when she lived in the States she had Men in Black episodes. And how she was followed by black cars and black helicopters. So, I went to the conference, talked to Brigitte, and then was the house move. A few days after, me and a friend went to the movies and a Pizza Hut – it was a Sunday night; I remember that. We were driving from Cheshire into Staffordshire, for about fifteen miles. And Cheshire is full of country roads, as you know. Farmers’ fields, countryside; that kind of thing.”

Tracie continued: “As we entered Staffordshire, I noticed there was an old, black Lincoln car coming towards us in the opposite direction. Although it was old, it looked new, but it was an old style, and it was totally out of place. And, coming from England, in Cheshire, that’s just not the kind of car you see: an American Lincoln. That’s what I thought: what’s an American car doing here? As the car approached us – coming the other way – I tried to see who the driver was, but I couldn’t see anybody. I’m not saying the car was driving itself, but I just couldn’t make out anyone. No-one. I could see it had really shiny bumpers and there was no [license] plate, at all. And I noticed that with every car behind that Lincoln, it was like it was the leader of the pack. I could see the drivers of the cars behind were all kind of “switched off.” It looked like an automatic mode. Like they were in a daze. It was very, very odd. “We got down the road and my friend said: ‘Did you see the way that vehicle was moving?’ I said, ‘No, what do you mean?’ He said: ‘The wheels were going around, but they weren’t touching the ground [italics mine].’ It was just like it was hovering, but not high, or I would have known. I was too busy trying to see the driver. I just said: “Oh, my God.”  It was really odd that I had had that conversation with Brigitte only a week prior, and now, a week later, I was having my own Man in Black encounter. I don’t believe in coincidence at all; I think everything is synchronicity.”

Here is another example of this matter of the Men in Black and their strange cars. It turns out that in 1967 – when Mothman mania was at its height in Point Pleasant, West Virginia (an issue we shall return to) – matters relative to the MIB were going down in none other than Defiance, Ohio, too; very mysterious matters. The story revolved around a man named Robert Easley. He who was a UFO researcher and a good friend of Timothy Green Beckley, a long-time UFO sleuth and someone who, in the 1960s, managed to capture an MIB on film, in Jersey City. For Easley, a resident of Defiance, it all began in the early hours of July 11, 1967. He was woken up by the sound of his phone ringing. Easley quickly answered it – perhaps fearing it was someone with bad news. It was actually a woman who wanted to report a sighting of two UFOs over the town – a sighting that was still going on.

Easley jumped into his car and sped off into the night. It turns out that Easley was shadowed all the way by a black Cadillac, very often the preferred mode of transport for the Men in Black. The car had no license plates, which is typical, too. As for the driver, who kept very close to Easley’s vehicle, his upper body and head were silhouetted and dark. That was not good news. The MIB soon vanished, however, taking another road and leaving Easley worried and slightly paranoid. He would soon be back, though. On the night of July 15, the MIB returned, yet again in his black Cadillac, following Easley for a number of nail-biting miles. Tim Beckley tells the story of what happened next: “When [Easley] pulled into his driveway, the unknown car sped off. Later that evening as he sat talking with his girlfriend on the front porch, the car came down the road and stopped right in front of the house, as soon as the topic of UFOs entered their conversation. Easley could feel the man looking at them. When they got off the subject the car left, but when they got back on it about an hour later, the same car came back again. It was as if the driver could hear what they were saying or read their minds.” Bizarre, indeed.